The Tech-Savvy General Manager Of The Charlotte Bobcats Is Changing The Way Scouting Works With A 'One-Stop Shopping' Database

The Charlotte Bobcats were one of the worst teams in NBA history last year, but they’ve developed a innovative, custom-built scouting system that should help turn things around.According to the Charlotte Observer, Bobcats GM Rich Cho spent six months and more than $100,000 building a scouting database that no one else in the league has access to.

The database includes everything you could possibly want to know about a player: live stats, scouting reports, injury history, obscure contract clauses that may trip up future trades, character issues, and run-ins with the law.

One of the really cool changes the Bobcats have made is in the way players are evaluated. From the Observer:

In an attempt to see trends ahead of the pack, Cho remade how Bobcats scouts file their reports. He didn’t like the standard practice of rating a player’s shooting or dribbling 1 through 10, because one scout’s eight was another scout’s six.

So he came up with a nine-level system with labels, descriptions and examples, for scouts to use as a guide. The rankings: Franchise, Core, Top starter, Starter, Key reserve, Reserve, Roster, Minor-league, No-Bobcat.

Cho is both an engineer (he once worked for Boeing) and a lawyer. When he was hired, he convinced owner Michael Jordan to hire three new staffers to work on projects like the scouting database.